There’s a new phone in the market and it is drawing a lot of attention. It’s called Yutopia from YU Televentures and people with keen interest in gadgets are curious to know more about it. Yutopia is not yet another low-end device in the highly populated affordable smartphone segment; it is a mid-range device and carries a price tag of Rs 24,999. Moreover, it runs on the latest Cyanogen OS 12.1 which packs in a lot of exciting features and ensures that the mobile experience is indeed unique. There’s also Around YU—suite of services including travel, food, entertainment—rolled into one discovery window. This new personal assistant provides a seamless experience that simplifies and saves a user time and effort to switch between plethora of apps. Whether the phone can elevate the user experience, let us find out in this review.

On the surface, Yutopia looks appealing to most consumers and is designed to be flaunted. Be it office meetings or social gatherings, the device is dressed to kill. The phone has a seamlessly blended body design, embodying strength and a premium feel through good craftsmanship. It has a unibody metal design with aircraft grade aluminum body with antenna bands integrated seamlessly into the chassis. The device’s PureBlack Touch panel gives a premium look and feel to it.

Switched on, Yutopia’s 5.2-inch sharp WQHD IPS display offers very good graphic quality and enables a user to traverse through the world of movies,entertainment and gaming in a seamless manner. Technical speak, it has a WQHD (wide screen Quad HD) with a display resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels in a 16:9 aspect ratio which basically means four times as many pixels as the 720p HDTV video standard.

Running on the latest Cyanogen OS 12.1, Yutopia gives users the access to a number of features including Custom Controls, Total Button Control, customisable Lock Screen shortcuts, among other exciting features. Camera experience is like never before too! There’s a 21 MP AF camera, 4K video recording, Full HD recording and more. Taking selfies is fun with a 8 MP front camera that also comes with a Wide FOV 86, which means wider view angle in short distance; so you can click as many groupfies as you want to.

There’s a built-in 192-point phase-detection to perfect your focus on fast moving object, a HDR function to improve image clarity even in high-contrast scenes and OIS (Optical image stabilisation) which cancels out unwanted shakes and bumps for incredibly sharp pictures and smooth videos.

Probing the innards, Yutopia can push boundaries with 64-bit performance processing data at the speed of light. Perfect for a multitasking experience, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor and 4 GB LPDDR4 RAM lets you easily dabble between work and play.

The device’s fingerprint scanner comes with an intelligent programmable wake-up functionality which means you can press and hold your finger on the scanner to wake up the device. The scanner comes with a round form factor— which foregrounds the design sensibilities and results in a seamless feel for rear-mounted integration on a unibody aluminum shell.

During the review period, Yutopia came across as a capable phone perfectly capable of handling everyday essentials. Navigating the phone’s interface is mostly smooth and trouble-free, apps and menus open quickly and the battery has enough juice to easily last an entire day of heavy usage. In summary, this is one phone definitely worth checking out if you want to stand out in the crowd.